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“Dude, don’t start crying,” says Steve, running a hand through his hair awkwardly.
They’re in a bit of a weird place for Steve and Robin to be, honestly, on a weird sort of day and in weird company. A hot summer rain has just finished and now the sun glares brilliantly off the white mist rising from the warm, wet asphalt of the tennis courts. They’re sitting on the grass bank even though it’s soaking wet, because they’re soaked through too, anyway, and a little bit of mud never hurt anyone.
“I’m not,” says Robin, shoving his shoulder with her free hand, “I’m genuinely not.”
He frowns at the side of her face where he can see tears budding even in the blinding brilliance of the sun. “Robs.”
“Steven.”
He pokes his tongue out at her. “Cheap shot.”
“Well —” she starts but gets cut off by a call from below.
“Steven!”
Robin laughs and they both turn down to the courts to see his mother waving her racket through the humid fog rising in eddying spires. “See,” she murmurs, “ she gets to call you Steven.”
“She named me it,” he points out in a low voice and then calls back, “Yeah?”
“Take Robin down to the resort, darling, it’s too wet to be sitting up there.”
They’d sat there all through the rain shower, watching his mother’s game, but sure, now they should go inside. He raises a thumbs up to her and stands to take Robin’s hand and pull her upright. “Come on, they’ve got a coffee machine.” Her hand is small and clammy in his, fingers bony and cold even in the heat of June, and it reminds him of things he’d rather not think about, fingers desperately caught around each other as they ran towards and from terrible things. He tugs her a little down the hill when she’s only half-standing to make her laugh and stumble so he can stop thinking about it.
“Dingus,” she says, elbowing him as she stumbles down the bank after him.
The humid air catches in their lungs as they round the tennis courts and squelch over the wet grass towards the concrete and glass building squatting beside the golf course and swimming pool building that made up the rest of the Loch Nora leisure centre (“Plebians: do not enter,” as Eddie had under-scored it when he’d come to poke around and see if there was anything he could steal when he found out Steve had a membership ).
“Did you mean it?” she says, as their feet meet tarmac and they follow the path towards the doors of the resort.
He shoots her another quick frown. “Of course I meant it,” he says, “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.” He squeezes her fingers which are sort of still loosely caught on his pinky. “Me and Eddie have been talking about it a lot recently.”
“Yeah?” He can hear her voice going wobbly again.
“Seriously, don’t start crying.”
“Why not? I’m on my period you can’t spring shit like this on me.”
He snorts. “Robs — We can talk about this when you aren’t bleeding out, if you like.”
The automatic doors slide open and blast them with cold AC, sticking their damp shirts to their skin. He tugs her down a side corridor rather than passing on to the atrium and the locker rooms and squash, basketball, and table tennis rooms, instead into the cool and quiet corridor of vending machines and water fountains with that eerie, out of time feel that corridors with funky carpeting and breeze block walls have.
“Ask me again,” she says, leaning against the wall beside the coffee machine while he makes them cappuccinos.
He glances at her. “Here?”
“Yeah. Here.”
He doesn’t get down on one knee, or anything, and they’re hardly in a romantic spot and they’re wearing rain-wet clothes, but he meets her eyes and says, “Will you marry me?”
She just nods: once, one quick little bob of her head, staring him down like she’s daring him to take it back, or laugh in her face.
He swallows tightly and wills him self not to cry. “Cool.”
“Dude,” she says, “don’t cry.”
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
“Are you going to tell your mom?”
He snorts. “Shit.”
“Will she make us have one of those fancy engagement parties?”
“Almost definitely.”
“Might be worth it for the presents.”
“Might be,” he allows.
“Steve?”
“Yeah?” He hands her one of the polystyrene cups of coffee.
“You and Eddie have been talking about… this?”
“Eddie’s a sap, he wants us all to stay together forever,” he says.
She rolls her eyes at him. “Mm sure, it was Eddie.”
He sips his own coffee, it’s cheap and bitter for a place like this but it still feels like waking up. “Fine, mostly me, but he wants to as well.” He shrugs at her. “Guess we like you. And Vickie.”
She snorts into her coffee. “I’ll let her know she’s just an after thought to you.”
He kicks her shoe. “Seriously: us four, living together. We’ll get married and people will just assume Vickie and Eddie are together and think they’re cute for having rhyming names.”
“Steve.”
He blinks at her. “Yeah?”
“I already said yes,” she says, her eyes glimmering all gentle and soft in the grim, florescent hallway lighting. “We’re engaged, now.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah… we’re… shit.”
“You backing out on me?” she whispers, like the coffee might have woken him up and dissuaded him, somehow, from marrying the girl of his dreams, or something.
“Of course not, idiot.”
“Dingus.”
“Shut up.”
“Dude,” she says, “don’t cry.”
“Shut up.”
She asks, “Are you going to get me a ring? A fancy one?”
“Maybe,” he says. “You have to help me pick it out, you’re going to be the one wearing it for the rest of your life.” He leans against the wall beside her, not sure he can stand up by himself any longer. His clothes are itchy-damp and the liminal space of the back corridors of the leisure centre are making him feel woozy and off centre and reminding him a little of subterranean places he’d rather forget.
Robin lets out a shaky breath. “Yeah, the rest of my life. Right.” She slurps on her coffee in that mildly annoying way he’s happy to spend the rest of his life listening to. The rest of their lives. “Good.”
He casts her a smile — her with her mascara running a little and cheeks red, baby-hairs sticking to her wet temples — and she smiles back. “Yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah, of course,” says Robin. “Rest of our lives, let’s do it.” She grabs his hand and he tries not to cry, he can wait for this (in the best kind of way, they’ve got the rest of their lives).